Editorial: Let war funding stand on its own

What do child predators, wildfires, crops and shrimp have to do with U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

What do child predators, wildfires, crops and shrimp have to do with U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Sorry, there’s no punchline to that setup. The answer is, of course, nothing. Which is why we’re not laughing at an attempt last week by certain congressional Democrats to tie a supplemental military funding bill to a bunch of unrelated matters.

In the Senate’s version of the war legislation these "domestic add-ons," as they’re being called, included $50 million to track kiddie predators, $350 million to fight Western fires, $400 million in rural school assistance and $75 million to prop up commercial fisheries. Another add-on was a provision awarding extended work permits for hundreds of thousands of immigrant farm laborers.

The House’s version, meanwhile, had $5.8 billion for New Orleans’ levees. It also tacked on a measure to extend unemployment for Americans whose benefits have run out, and another to block the Bush administration’s attempt to cut Medicaid.

Look, our objection is not to these domestic priorities in and of themselves. Each one is an important issue worthy of due congressional consideration.

But they absolutely do not belong next to the $165 billion necessary to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the rest of President Bush’s term.

Indeed, riddling the war legislation with add-ons was a purely political move. For some Democrats, it was a dare to Bush — if he wants his war bucks, he’ll have to choke down a spoonful of unrelated spending, as he did last year to the tune of $17 billion. For some Republicans, it was an opportunity to support the war and bring home the bacon to constituents. GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, for instance, eagerly sent out a press release to Alabamans bragging about fishery assistance.

Tomfoolery like this is why Americans can’t stand politics. And it’s a disservice to the thousands of Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the fate of their funding gets hung up on Capitol Hill.

So bizarre are the political motivations involved and so entangled are the defense/domestic add-on measures that some fiscally conservative House Republicans actually helped anti-war House Democrats defeat the military funding.

Congress should let war spending — and child predator spending, and Medicaid spending, and school spending, etc. — stand or sink on their own merits.